I’m a driver. Not in the sense that I drive people around for a living, I just enjoy driving a lot. I guess I could’ve initially said “I enjoy driving a lot.” It’s hard for me to think of times when I didn’t have my license and had to be chauffeured around by a parent. That’s no way to live life.

To get to the point I’m at now, I had to go through driving school TWICE. I don’t think my mom trusted that I would be a good driver right away. Probably because of the time that I pulled onto a main road without stopping, while cars were approaching in both directions.

I didn’t drive with my mom much after that. I think I eventually forced my dad to risk his life and drive with me. I pretty much drove in circles and made him listen to the Chicago soundtrack with me. He had it comin’, he had it comin’, he only had himself to blame….if you’d have been there, if you’d have seen it, I betcha you would’ve done the same!

And all that jazz.

See, I get talked into taking classes easily. I remember freshman year of high school, I was 15 years old before most of the people in my year. My friend told me that I should take Driver’s Ed through the school with her since I was old enough to get my learner’s permit. I got my permit, and the next semester, I was in class with her. My teacher was super old and annoying and always talked about how good his break reaction speed was. Like, who cares?

The best part of the class is that we got to leave school. Driving around was fine, but leaving school was an amazing feeling. In that class I earned the name Lead-foot Lily (It was actually my last name, but Lily sounds better. Don’t you hate when teacher’s refer to you as your last name like you’re in the army or something? ) because, you can guess, I was into going fast and breaking hard.

Do you think the guy that’s driving is nervous because he’s driving without a license plate?

After I was done with that class, my mom enrolled me in a driving class outside of school. My teacher’s name was Mr. Wickersham and he would drive up to my house and I would get in the car and drive around with him and pick up other kids who wanted to die. Wickersham was old and boring. He didn’t give me a cool nickname, but on my sixteenth birthday he took me through the McDonald’s drive thru and bought me a Sausage McMuffin. So he definitely had some credibility.

I waited a month after my birthday to get my license. I was nervous. Everyone at school liked to tell horror stories of which DMV was the worst and which ones made you parallel park and which ones made you pull out into oncoming traffic. I was a pro at pulling out into oncoming traffic so I picked that one. Everything went smoothly and I almost hugged the guy that was testing me when he said, “Alright, you passed.” I even opened the door for him we we went back inside.

Ever since then, I’ve been a driving machine. Lead-foot or not, I like to drive around, listen to tunes, and sing by myself. It soothes me. It’s a new form of freedom when you’re sixteen. You can just get up and go whenever you want. Unless you don’t have a car. Then nothing really changes.

I’ve come across some updates having to do with my new homeland. Can you have a “new homeland”? It’s getting to the point where I’m used to all of the weirdness around me. The same thing happened to me in England. After a while I was saying things like “might do” instead of “maybe”. It’s all down hill from there. I’ve even been tempted to throw in an “eh” every now and then. I need an electric collar to shock me any time I get too Canadian.

Canada’s population has recently grown quite a bit since the last census in 2006 (31.6 mill). Now the nation has reached 33.5 million. That’s pretty exciting. I mean, I don’t like to bring up the fact that Canada is the 2nd largest country in the world and has a population slightly lower than the state of California. But hey, who’s counting?! Good for you, Canada!

In other news, Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, went to China. He’s decided to get two giant pandas on loan from China for five years. These pandas will be places in the Calgary zoo and the Toronto zoo. Stephen Harper is now my biggest enemy. I can relate to these gentle giants. Pandas want to be in China. They don’t want to come over to Canada. They just wanna chill and eat bamboo. The kicker is, borrowing these pandas for five years costs 10 million dollars. I feel like there are better ways to spend that money. Like on me, for example.

I saw a license plate that changed my life the other day. In Canada, there are about 14 license plates. I personally think all of the United State’s license plates are cool, but I had never seen one like this:

The Northwest Territories plate is shaped like a polar bear! I think Nunavut’s is as well. I mean, it would suck to live up there, so they probably had to do something cool to ease everyone’s pain. I think “spectacular” might be slightly misleading, but whatever. I think you can see the Northern Lights in the NW Territories. That’s the only reason I would venture up there.

You know that saying, “Nothing good ever happens after midnight”? Well, I think nothing good ever happens before 9 AM. Mornings are not my friend. Not because I’m cranky….okay yes, because I’m cranky. Waking up is just so painful.

My morning routine consists of: opening my eyes, closing my eyes again and then trying to fall back asleep. If that doesn’t work, I grab my computer and sit in bed for around an hour until I feel like getting out of my cocoon of warmth. I’m sure you think I’m really lazy, but I actually lead a very productive life. I keep our place clean and smelling delightful, I cook, I workout and I babysit twice a week. If I didn’t just describe your dream woman, then you’re most likely a lesbian.

The most annoying thing about this morning was that my alarm wouldn’t turn off. This had never happened before so my first rational thought was that my phone was possessed. I turned the entire thing off to insure that the demon inside would flee–preferably into the woman who lives across the hall, but I really can’t afford to be picky.

I had to drive (technically Paul drove) Paul to the airport so he could go take an exam in Vancouver. We’re so worldly. We left the house at 6:15 AM. It was so dark and morning-y outside. It smelled like morning. I hate that. The car was cold when we got inside. Granted, its January in Canada, but still. I hate getting in cold cars. Don’t we have enough geniuses in the world to make a car that warms up in under a minute? Or do I have to patent every invention myself?

Another thing that you have to deal with in the morning is traffic. I’ve come to the conclusion that people who drive places in the early morning are all shady characters. I looked in everyone’s windows and no one looked normal. I probably looked the least normal since I was busy staring at everyone, but still.

At the airport, I got a breakfast burrito, no cheese. They messed up my order–there was some weird cheese sauce in it. Paul said it was dressing, but seriously, who puts dressing in a breakfast burrito? Chefs purposely get food orders wrong in the morning because they think people are half-asleep and won’t know the difference if they experiment with dressing in breakfast burritos. But you know what? I noticed. Don’t try pulling a fast one on me, buddy. JUST DON’T.

The only good thing about this morning was that I saw the sunrise. It was gorgeous. I came thisclose to getting in car crashes whilst admiring the solar beauty. It was great, but not as great as going back to bed is going to be.

I was browsing through various news stories the other day and something caught my eye: “Fifa Street references Vancouver.” Immediately I thought that this must be something special since it was in the news. Maybe this was the first time that Canada has ever been cool enough to be in a video game that didn’t include fur trapping.

Unfortunately, the article mostly dealt with the fact that there were no female avatars in the game. Apparently it’s because

the added cost to shape [women’s] bodies and model movement and clothing is costly and didn’t provide enough return on investment.

This would probably upset a lot of female rights activists, lesbians, or just annoying women. But I couldn’t care less. I’m what you would call an anti-feminist. I think women shouldn’t have to make a living outside of the household. And I definitely do not agree with that “anything you can do, I can do better” mentality. That’s probably the farthest thing from the truth. Unless you have some sort of disability. Because if that’s the case, I will totally destroy you.

I think we all know the real reason why the bros at EA Sports haven’t made female players–girls are bad at sports. No guy would pick the girl player. Most girls don’t even pick the girl player. For example, when I play Crazy Taxi, I always pick Axel. The game includes one girl character and I don’t think anyone has ever used her. Why? Because the objective is to drive fast and not get into accidents. Axel will always deliver. Plus, he has green hair.

Okay so I am sure everyone and their grandma has heard about Occupy Wall Street. I really don’t have time for those people sitting in the cold and protesting. Look, I find things to be upset about every day, but you don’t see me crying about them (publicly).

The other day my husband and I were driving around downtown Victoria and there were about 10 tents set up around city hall. As per usual I was confused and asked Paul what they were doing. He said that they were “Victoria’s version of Occupy Wall Street.” I cackled after he told me this. Full cackle.

So I guess the Canadian activist group Adbusters started the demonstration-protesting social and economic inequality. So basically, Canada is to blame for Occupy Wall Street. I mean, lets think about this for a second. Inequality is always going to be around. There are always going to be people in better circumstances and there are always going to be people in worse ones. That’s just the way the world works…unless you’re living in Communist Russia.Which could be a fun change of scenery–plus you get to wear those furry hats and pretend that you’re Evelyn Salt.

But whatever. I guess its cute that people are fighting for something. Although, maybe people should be more like this girl:

I guess I would be the 1% that doesn’t really care at all. I didn’t even want to educate myself on the issue until about 5 minutes ago.

Since I’ve been in Victoria, I haven’t seen any mounties. Mounties are one of those things that epitomizes Canada. Much like fatties to the United States. In England people made it a point to tell me about obesity in the US. If I made a complaint about something British, people would often say, “Well at least we aren’t overweight like everyone in the states”. I couldn’t really argue it either. WE LIKE FOOD, OKAY?

Maybe I haven’t seen any mounties because I don’t actually live in the mountains. Paul just assured me that mounties do not strictly patrol mountainous regions. Apparently (this might be boring…but educational!) they are in charge of rural areas instead of more populated city areas. I live quite close to the city center so I guess it makes sense that I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing any. So in Victoria, we have city police and in the towns further out, they have national, mounted police.

So my next question to Paul was–how do the mounties actually do any good when they are on horseback? Like, could you imagine them galloping to pull someone over? Waving a flashlight above their head to simulate a police car? Well I guess they aren’t mounted anymore. Which totally ruins everything. WHY are the even called mounties if they aren’t even mounted? Seeing a mountie in a car would just be weird

Lets be real. Mountie uniforms are super creepy, but they are original. I think they should go back to their roots, ditch the cars, find some horses, and patrol everywhere in Canada. I feel like people wouldn’t have to deal with as many tickets, AND you would get a free pony ride back to the station. Its a win/win situation if you ask me.